supermarket sweeps

Carrefour is a huge chain of supermarkets in Spain. We had our first Carrefour experience the other day in search of supplies for our beloved and revived "Nacho Noche" tradition. We walked in... and it was HUGE. Food everywhere, a ton of sections, workers walking around with clipboards asking you to fill out an application to get a Carrefour card. I couldn't even reply because my bottom jaw was chillin' somewhere down around my ankles: how the hell were we going to find anything in under 2 hours in this place?

The Carrefour experience led to some interesting observations, some of which I will list:

1. There are like 9 different sections with cheese. There's a cheese aisle, cheese refridgerator bins, cheese in the butcher meat section, here a cheese, there a cheese, everywhere a cheese cheese... needless to say it took a lil time to find a bag of grated mozzarella.

2. The butcher section. Spaniards love the meat, and I mean that in the dietary way. Now, I normally have no problem with people eating meat... hey, I still eat chicken and I oddly enough enjoy a good meatloaf... it's fine. What I don't like to see is blatant evidence that this ______ was once an animal... ie I like my chicken to come as boneless cutlets. There was a moment (probably while searching for the cheese) where I was surrounded... SURROUNDED... by meat. Rows and rows of pig legs, packs of perfectly preserved kidneys, huge cuts of meat just HANGING, de-skinned rabbits just sittin' there in the cooler. Oh my God. Imagine this photo, except on all sides of you.


3. For our nacho noche, obviously we needed to find things such as tortilla chips, salsa, and refried beans. Where did we find said supplies? OBVIOUSLY mixed in with the Chinese food. I don't mean that they were in the same aisle but in their own areas, I mean all mixed together. The wontons were hanging out with the burritos and the duck sauce was stuck in there with chip salsa. I guess it was the Chinexican section. Totally normal.

4. Butter. There was a tub of butter and it came with a free gift! An English dictionary! WHY? The butter company wasn't even English or American. When's the last time you wanted to butter a piece of toast and suddenly felt the urgent need to know the translation of some word.

5. Finally, the check out line. So this supermarket is HUGE. Like a Target store, but filled with food. If you go to this store, you're not F-in' around. You are about to spend some serious Euros on a diesel amount of food. So you arrive to the check out line with your about to explode from being full carriage, and the conveyer belt is about the length and width of 2 loaves of bread. Logic, logic, logic.